Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!neuron.cis.ohio-state.edu!pja From: pja@neuron.cis.ohio-state.edu (Peter J Angeline) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: toward a definition of AI Message-ID: Date: 11 Mar 91 15:27:29 GMT References: <13477@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> <17084@venera.isi.edu> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: pja@cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 38 In-reply-to: smoliar@isi.edu's message of 10 Mar 91 23:47:46 GMT In article <13477@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> news@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU (USENET News) writes: > Searle, on the other hand, is saying that there must be more to human > behavior than any sort of mechanical analysis. What is that "more?" Well, > that's where all the controversy lies. Searle seems to be part of a long > line of philosophers, beginning with Brentano, who firmly believe that such > a "more" exists but have not gotten much further than giving it a name: > intentionality. The whole point of the Chinese Room argument is not so > much to dump on artificial intelligence as to demonstrate that machines > are fundamentally incapable of having intentionality. Given that > "intentionality" is about as elusive a piece of terminology as > "intelligence" (or Searle's favorite, "understanding"), Searle's arguments > have more to do with intimidation than with deduction. You're equating "machine" with "Turing Machine". Searle's argument is not that "human behavior", as you've termed it, is extra-mechanical but is not adequtaely represented by Turing Machine formalisms and the standard notion of "strict" AI (i.e. pure symbol manipulation). Equating all "machines" with "Turing machines" and "symbol manipulation" is a limitation of what we might call "machine". There are more powerful methods of computation which can still be called "machines" but which can not fit into a turing machine. Boolean Circuit Families (from computational theory) are an alternative method of computation, clearly dentotable as a "machine" but are not able to be represented by turing machines. > USPS: Stephen Smoliar > 5000 Centinela Avenue #129 > Los Angeles, California 90066 > Internet: smoliar@venera.isi.edu -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter J. Angeline ! Laboratory for AI Research (LAIR) ARPA: ! THE Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210 pja@cis.ohio-state.edu ! "Nature is more ingenious than we are."